The reproduction of documents
by bhut
Summary: The truth behind Hokage-sama's dislike of paperwork and how Umino Iruka came to work in his office.


**The reproduction of documents**

_None of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners._

Once upon a time, Sarutobi Hiruzen-sama was elected to be the Hokage of Konoha for a second time. Like any intelligent manager and experienced leader, Sarutobi-sama could not stand paperwork. He trained his underlings thusly as well, to keep the paper-related expenses to a minimum.

And so, once upon a morning, Sarutobi-sama went to work and opened his vault. He knew that there were only two papers in it: an order to fire a certain drunken chunin and a decree regarding the shifting of the furniture in the Tower's offices. But now, there was a third one as well, and everything in it was in order: the form, the seal, etc. The contents though were something else: they consisted of a demand that some underling of Ibiki would receive a rotating chair as a reward for fifty years of spotless service in T&I department. Since the retirement for T&I service did not last longer than 10, Sarutobi-sama first had sharply criticized his secretary, and then threw the extra paper into the wastebasket.

Then Sarutobi-sama opened the folder that was lying on his table and was struck dumb: its content had doubled! Some papers he did compose personally, others he had looked over. But the third group had come out of nowhere. And these papers contained a veritable miscellany: a shipping paper for the land of Wave, the amoral behaviour of Maito Gai (who was a veritable ascetic when it came to women), and the failure to achieve the quarterly award by everybody, including the Hokage himself...

By tomorrow it was worse – the extra papers came back _very__vigorously_. Hokage-sama had to put everything on hold and to sort out the papers in his office. He banned everybody from disturbing him, but ordered instead the T&I to bring one him of their muffle ovens to burn his extra paperwork. Moreover, when he left his office for that evening, he sealed-off both his office and his cabinet.

It did not help. When Hokage-sama arrived the next morning, he thought that he was robbed, but it was only his vault giving way from all the documents that had materialized in it. Therefore, he spent the rest of that day as well burning down the extra papers. Moreover, it became harder to separate the genuine ones from the fakes: they began to resemble each other more closely. And he almost mistook the firing order of one lazy shinobi for the real deal, but remembered just in time that that was one of the new and promising tokubetsu jounin instead, and the latter most definitely did not deserve to be fired.

And so, in desperation, Sarutobi-sama remembered a certain chunin – Umino Iruka. His parents, before they were killed by Kyuubi no Kitsune had been a high-ranking ANBU and iryonin respectively, and their son had retained their quick intelligence and sharp wits, though not their ambition. In any case, when Hokage-sama encountered Iruka-san over at Ichiraku's, he – rather humbly – asked for the chunin's advice. Iruka-san heard Hokage-sama out and implied that to solve this quandary he could use a good glass of sake. Hokage-sama willingly complied (he did not mind having a good glass of sake himself at the moment).

In any case, after drinking his sake, Iruka-san made a scientific conclusion: in most of Konoha's offices, the office papers reproduced in a rather vegetative state: one document evolves from another, the third from the second, etc. At the same time, the papers essentially parasitize upon the person: he or she has to compose, draw and seal them. However, in the anti-paper atmosphere of Hokage-sama's office, these old methods no longer worked. To ensure the survival of their species, the office papers had to evolve and learn to sexually reproduce. I.e., the orders and instructions of a decisive, radical nature became masculine and the papers aimed to maintaining the internal order – feminine. Plus, to prevent from being burned in Hokage-sama's furnace, these papers learned to mimic the real paperwork as well. Konoha is about to fall into chaos and anarchy, therefore Hokage-sama has to do something as well.

Hokage-sama did. He gave Iruka-san a second glass of sake, and that spurred Iruka-san to discover a way to save Konoha. Firstly, no two documents could be put together. Secondly, each document should have its own forum. Thirdly, if each file had to have several papers, each pair had to be separated by a thick piece of cardboard.

And that was what Hokage-sama did. Now his office is full of paperwork, each piece of paper has its own folder, and the uninitiated have developed a false impression: "How many papers does our Hokage-sama have!" the green genin wonder. "That's so unlike him!"

Yet Hokage-sama, and his right-hand man, Umino Iruka-san, just smile knowingly and know better.


End file.
